Monday, April 21, 2014

Brad DeLong thinks that Bastiat would be a modern liberal (I had said the other day that he likely would be a libertarian but that Smith, Jefferson, Locke, Paine, etc. were classical liberals that would very plausibly be left-liberals today).

I think he makes a good case. I've discussed many of the passages he presents to make the claim here, and I think they are important for libertarian fans of Bastiat especially to be aware of. And anyone that's followed the blog for a few years know that I think most modern invocations of the broken window are God-awful and that Bastiat's understanding of general equilibrium is far more sophisticated and closer to people like me or Krugman who make important distinctions between stocks and flows (wealth and income) in arbitrating the effects of, for example, a disaster.

I would only say this in my defense (because I still think he would be more of a libertarian, simply due to the center of gravity of his commentary): he would certainly be more of a libertarian in the vein of Hayek of the Constitution of Liberty or Law, Legislation, and Liberty than a libertarian like Bob Murphy (for example).

11 comments:

"I would only say this in my defense (because I still think he would be more of a libertarian, simply due to the center of gravity of his commentary): he would certainly be more of a libertarian in the vein of Hayek of the Constitution of Liberty or Law, Legislation, and Liberty than a libertarian like Bob Murphy (for example)."

Which is a very, very good reason to have a separate words for Hayek-type people and Murphy-type people.

Libertarians have done a pretty good job drawing the boundaries between each other. Lots of people may not understand those nuances but that's not likely to change any time soon and it certainly doesn't justify this "liberalism unrelinquished" movement.

I agree, but I don't think the answer to distinguishing between libertarians is to take a very appropriate word away from left-liberals.

Besides whether or not one wants to argue over the meaning words (a mostly useless enterprise based on symbolism rather than anything resembling substance) is the fact that Wolfe basically resembles lots of folks who have a big idea and wish to apply it everywhere (and who think that, like say Leo Strauss, think that we've gone astray from some gloried golden mean of the past):

~Wolfe, however, rarely concedes liberalism’s limitations. Take just about any issue facing the West today, Wolfe tells us — immigration, terrorism, the place of religion in society, government secrecy, the economic consequences of globalisation — sprinkle some of liberalism’s magic dust on it, and a solution is at hand.

Wolfe identifies a realistic modesty as one of liberalism’s hallmarks, but he is offering a rather immodest vision. An implication, sometimes subtle and sometimes not, ripples across the pages of The Future of Liberalism: if we’d only taste of liberalism’s sweet reasonableness, then the world would be a better place. As Wolfe sees it, liberalism seems to encompass all that is right and good, and pity those who do not see things this way. At times, with his checklist of liberal virtues, he can be as rigid as a political commissar sniffing out smelly little heresies. Wolfe preaches an open mind — indeed, as he repeatedly notes, this is one of liberalism’s sacred tenets — but he tends to dismiss all those who stand beyond the pale of his own philosophy.

Liberals are not the only ones who pass off their theories as a reflection of the natural order — for this, in many ways, is the central philosophy of conservatism — but they may be the only ones who forcefully deny they are doing so. This is dirty secret of The Future of Liberalism. Wolfe’s readings of Mill and Kant are bracing, and his defence of the welfare state generally solid, but if you press the logic of his claims, you end up with something very much like a liberal version of natural law. Wolfe holds liberalism’s truths to be self-evident, when they are no such thing.~

Re: "I still think he would be more of a libertarian, simply due to the center of gravity of his commentary..." Where do you see the center of gravity of his commentary as being? I see him as reacting against the French regulatory state, but doing so in a sensible greatest-good-of-the-greatest-number there-is-government-failure-but-there-is-also-market-failure way, rather than going into libertarian la-la-land.

"Libertarian lala land" is a little vague. So I don't think Hayek is in libertarian lala land in most cases. I think there are lots of libertarians who I think are quite wrong but are not in lala land. Indeed the "there is market failure and government failure" line is a well known motto of the GMU economics department (some take the claim more seriously than others there, I would say).

The point is simply this - he notes government failure and market failure but he seems to take the former more seriously (perhaps rightly), and as a result he proposes taking decision making power out of the hands of the state more than a left liberal would. One does not need to be a proponent of the French regulatory state to be a left liberal (indeed it's best that a left liberal isn't!). When you care Bastiat to Smith, for example, you have much stronger hesitations about market failures in Smith.

Seriously though, way back in the day when Marxism was relevant to a lot more people than it is today Marxists of an intellectual bent would argue who and who was not a proto-Marxist (Thomas More and his discussion in _Utopia_ is a good example of this); this seems a lot like that.

I am very much in agreement with you. The context of this discussion is Kevin Frei and Dan Klein's effort to "reclaim" the word liberalism from left-liberals. Generally speaking I think such things are silly for exactly the reasons you state. I also think there's good reason language is used the way it's used and there's nothing non-sensical about calling left-liberals "liberals" as well as Adam Smith a "liberal".

So I am on the same page as you.

But this hypothetical is a little more relevant than what you propose because we are at least thinking about intellectual history and continuity of ideas. This is more along the lines of asking whether we should think about Saint-Simon and Marx as being in the same intellectual stream.

~This is more along the lines of asking whether we should think about Saint-Simon and Marx as being in the same intellectual stream.~

Well, then that's a bit like similar debates regarding when "Renaissance" began and whether it was a break with or a continuation of Middle Ages, or, perhaps much more on point, who is/was and who is/was not a part of continental philosophy (the so-called split between the analytic and continental schools). To continue the analogy, these sorts of discussions say much, much more about the sociology and group loyalties of the current discussants than they do about the history of 15th century Italy or whether certain groups of philosophers really do value clarity in writing (which there are far too many exceptions in the so-called analytical school to ignore with a straight face).

Anyway, it is funny that you would mention Saint-Simon and Marx together, because it was Marx who argued that such a connection existed when it is just as fair to say that Marx's efforts to grab about for precursors (Proudhon, Saint-Simon, etc.) to so-called "scientific socialism" was a bit like anyone who tries to create a historical pedigree out of thin air (a useable history as it is sometimes called). Then again, F.A. Hayek saw Saint-Simon as the well spring of modern socialist thought. But I think this is entirely wrong because Saint-Simon's desire to create a hierarchy of industrial chiefs and wise men has as much in common with various clearly non-socialist 19th century figures (here Victorian pessimists as well as the class of various racists at the time - Ernst Haekel comes to mind) as any other 19th century intellectual current.

As for Adam Smith or other members of the Scottish Enlightenment evolving into "modern liberals" (whoever they are) if they were alive today, well, all I can say is that I have no idea.

I still don't get how modern day liberals are anything close to being about liberalism. Liberalism is about freedom and classical liberalism was built on distrust of authority and skepticism. Modern day liberalism grants more power to authority, centralizes power, and doesn't stand for anything. It's a bullshit ideology. How can anyone call themselves a liberal but argue for centralization? That doesn't make any sense.